


let's talk about the weather

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, First Time, Friends With Benefits, Graduation, Lack of Communication, M/M, not a particularly happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 02:39:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21219203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The first time that they had done this, Oikawa had saiddon’t talkagainst his lips and pushed him into the mattress with his hips, and so Hajime hadn’t.





	let's talk about the weather

**Author's Note:**

> [not numb but not feeling too much now/unfazed on the days i should break down/because i’ve seen everything, every coast in every weather - things are better, pvris]

**[hate to tell you things are better]**

**2.**

The first time that they had done this, Oikawa had said _don’t talk _against his lips and pushed him into the mattress with his hips, and so Hajime hadn’t. 

It only occurs to Hajime, after, that this, too, was something they should have talked about. But Oikawa never likes to talk about things, and Hajime hates to push. It’s not like he doesn’t know. Oikawa had stopped being difficult to read, for him, a while ago. 

But the wrong turn, a while ago - 

But that’s a problem for later. There’s still a week before graduation. For now:

There are Oikawa’s hands, spanning the small of his back, pushing his shirt up, moving across to the front to slide up to Hajime’s throat to hold him down. Hajime lets himself be held down. He allows Oikawa’s touch to sear into his skin and his mind, he allows Oikawa to fit the entire length of his body against his and push, and push, and push. 

“Is this okay?” Oikawa whispers against his skin. “Do you want this?”

_Is this okay? _Hajime feels overheated. He feels like already, nothing is the same. He already wants to tell Oikawa to move his hands, to tangle them into his hair, to press against his sides or where he wants them most. _Does he want this? _

He’s wanted this for a while now, probably. He just hadn’t realized this was a thing he could be asking for. So he says, “Yes,” and feels Oikawa’s mouth split apart against his neck, like he was smiling or preparing to bite or both. 

When Oikawa moves his hand to his waistband to trace gently the hipbone there, his hips jerk in response. When Oikawa shoves at his shirt, he allows it to be taken off. When Oikawa braces himself on his elbows over his stomach, he looks at Hajime and says, “You can touch, too.”

Maybe it’s obvious that Hajime’s never done this before. Maybe it’s too painfully obvious that Oikawa’s the only one he’s ever wanted to do this with, he’s just never realized it could be a thing to ask for. Maybe the moment that Oikawa kisses him - 

“Why won’t you kiss me?” Hajime asks, blunt. The words slip out before he can fully realize what he might be saying. It’s so hard to tell what the right thing to say might be, in the dark, in Oikawa’s bed, under his touch.

Oikawa smiles, then. Not the horrible wide thing he gives everyone all the time, the one he never feels, the one people never seem to manage to tell isn’t real, but the kind he seems to save just for Hajime. The slow one, the quiet one. The one that tells Hajime he’s the only one, or at least that he’s pretending it’s true. “You want me to kiss you, Iwa-chan?”

This one, Hajime doesn’t need to consider. “Yes,” he answers, and moves upwards, and Oikawa moves down. Their lips meet with a little too much force, and Oikawa laughs, smooths his hands down over Hajime’s bare shoulders, bends down to try again. This one is slower, sweeter; this one Oikawa opens him gently up into, slides his tongue into his mouth, explores like he’s savoring it, like he wants to remember it. 

Hajime puts his hands on Oikawa’s shoulders. Slides them down, beneath his shirt. Tugs at his shirt. Swallows Oikawa’s moan when his thumbs move over his nipples, and then another when he moves them still lower. 

He had never realized this was a thing that he could’ve been asking for. He had never thought that the feel of anyone against him could be quite so terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. He had never thought, maybe, that Oikawa had been thinking about this for just as long as he has. Maybe longer. Maybe, maybe, longer. 

“Come on,” Oikawa says, open-mouthed against his jaw. “Come on, Iwa-chan, you can do better, you can -”

“You were the one who said not to talk,” Hajime says, but he curls his arm around Oikawa’s waist, turns them over, presses his knees on the mattress on either side of Oikawa’s hips. Oikawa presses back against the pillows. He could be smiling. He’s smiling. 

He helps Hajime take off his shirt, and then his pants, and then Hajime’s pants, too. “There you go,” he says, sounding pleased, and then Hajime shifts himself between Oikawa’s legs and moves his mouth down his neck and down his chest and down, down, down, and they stop talking. 

-

**1.**

“Your mother called,” Hajime yells into the court. “She’s wondering if you got yourself kidnapped, and if not, if you’re going home for dinner.”

A ball smacks into the wall of the gym right by Hajime’s face with all the force of one of Oikawa’s famous serves. Hajime forces himself not to flinch, as Oikawa’s voice, from the far end of the court, drifts over to him: “Ah, Iwa-chan, are you here to escort me home?”

No, Hajime thinks, he’s just been here waiting for Oikawa to tire himself out since the end of practice. He’d had studying to do in the library anyway. He doesn’t say this. Instead, he says, “No, I’m here out of concern for your poor mother’s heart.”

There’s a pause. Hajime glances at Oikawa’s form down at the endline, a cart full of volleyballs beside him, his legs already tensed, hand extended, for the next serve. “Ten more,” he says, voice suddenly strange and subdued, and then tosses the ball he’s holding into the air. 

Hajime doesn’t think it’s just going to be ten more. He thinks it’s going to be the rest of the balls in that cart, and then since Hajime’s here anyway Oikawa will insist on making him pick up the balls, and then he’ll start all over again, and he’ll be here until his hand is too numb to feel the ball when he hits it. 

Despite the late hour, despite the ache in his hands and arms and legs from practice earlier, Hajime pulls off his track jacket and slides into position on the court opposite Oikawa. He puts his arms together. 

Oikawa, through the net, raises his eyebrows at him. He picks another ball from the cart, rolls it between his palms. He steps back from the endline. Hajime tenses his entire body; he watches Oikawa’s steps in the lead up, the graceful arc of the ball that he tosses it up, the curve of Oikawa’s body as he leaps into the air after it.

He just barely manages to catch the serve, but it goes sideways anyway, too much force behind it for Hajime to take. They watch the ball bounce first off the side of the gym near the door where Hajime had come in, and then ricochet itself into a corner before rolling to a stop.

“Again,” Oikawa says. He’s breathing hard already. How many serves has he made since Hajime had left him here after practice for the library?

Hajime bends his knees and looks straight ahead. 

The second serve glances off the side of his arm with the promise of a lurid bruise to come and makes him grit his teeth. The third goes skimming over his head and slams down right on the endline. The fourth he sends spinning out of bounds. The fifth - 

He dives for the fifth, knees skidding against the gym floor, and sends it flying up, up, over the net. It drops down on the other side of the court, and echoes emptily in the silence of the gym. 

Oikawa says, “Good job.”

Hajime doesn’t know what to say to this. He’d only managed to receive the serve either because Oikawa had let him, or because Oikawa was slipping. He doesn’t want to consider either of those possibilities, not with Oikawa’s face so blank and meters away from him. 

He shoves himself to his feet. His forearms are already aching, all over again. He says, “Shittykawa, I think my arms are breaking, let’s go home.”

Oikawa doesn’t react for a moment, just staring, hands limp at his sides. Then his face splits into the kind of grin that Hajime hates the most, just as fake as it is bright. “Did I tire you out, Iwa-chan?”

“I’m hungry,” Hajime says. He glances around the gym, resigns himself to pick up all the balls he’d missed, begins to walk. “Your mother’s worried. Come on, clean up.”

“You can just say you’re worried about me, Iwa-chan! I know how much you miss me when I’m gone!”

Hajime hasn’t stopped worrying about Oikawa in a while, he thinks. Not since the beginning of their third year, when their homeroom teacher had asked them to fill out career sheets that Oikawa had just scribbled anatomically incorrect doodles all over, and gotten away with it because everyone had assumed he’d just move on to playing professional volleyball. Had been worrying since Oikawa had then proceeded to put in longer and longer and more painful hours at the gym, taking out something unseen on his serves. Had been worrying ever since he’d decided that - 

“I’m texting your mother first. She deserves to know at least that you still live to annoy the world another day.”

“Didn’t you say she was worried that I got kidnapped?”

Hajime hefts a ball beneath his arm, reaches for another. When he straightens, he realizes that Oikawa hasn’t moved from his serving position at all, has just been standing there looking at Hajime. 

He says, “I told her that you’d probably just talk your kidnapper to death. Nothing to worry about there.”

“Such sweet things you say, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa sighs, putting on a heavy expression of disappointment. But something must have done the trick, though, because Oikawa begins to move as well, to pick up balls, to put them away. 

When they’re done, Hajime shrugs back into his track jacket and Oikawa into his, and they pick up their discarded bags and head out into the gathering night together. It’s the beginning of July. The air is warm and balmy. Soon, they will graduate. Soon, it will be summer. And too soon after that, there will no longer be this to have. 

This: walking at Oikawa’s side, walking their familiar path home. This: Oikawa’s grin growing slowly more and more genuine the further away from school they get. This: he as the person who knows Oikawa best, the person who Oikawa trusts to know him best, to retrieve him from the gym hours past dinner time, to walk him home in the dark.

This: Oikawa leaving him at his front door to walk to his, saying, 

“See you tomorrow, Iwa-chan!”

This: the lingering thought of a _maybe, perhaps, one day, _that Hajime’s long stopped letting himself look at too close. 

-

**3.**

Everything feels like lying, after. 

It only occurs to Hajime, now, that he probably should’ve made them talk about it. Oikawa doesn’t like talking about things that matter to him, likes to keep those things close to his chest and closer to his heart, but Hajime’s long since learned to read between the lines, and Oikawa’s long since learned to let him. Such as things go when you’ve known someone longer than you’ve known yourself. But this, though: Hajime thinks he’s made a wrong assumption, somewhere. A wrong turn, a little while back. 

Oikawa had thought them on the same page because there’s never been a time when they weren’t, but Hajime’s made a wrong turn here somewhere and he’s lost the map to help him get back. 

It doesn’t help that Oikawa looks happy here, in the Okinawa Aquarium on their graduation trip, for the first time than he’s been in a while. He hasn’t looked happy like this since graduation became less of a looming, impending deadline in the distance and more of something real, something inevitable, something already upon them. He takes Hajime’s hand and drags him to all the exhibitions that he wants to see, the huge, famous shark tank where they sit and sigh and marvel, the outdoor pools of sea turtles, the dark, endless room with all the little tanks of deep-sea, bioluminescent creatures. 

“They look like aliens,” he laughs, pulling Hajime to the next tank, and then the next, and then the next. “Look, they’re adorable! This one looks just like you, Iwa-chan!”

He keeps taking Hajime’s hand and although he never holds it for long, he tucks his hand into Hajime’s front hoodie pocket, like he wants to make sure Hajime won’t disappear on him. The difference, Hajime thinks, is that now it feels like Oikawa could be scared to let go, even though it had felt like he was the one always walking away, before.

Maybe he already knows. 

Hajime bends closer to the tank, frowns at first the thing inside and then at its description, on a little plaque at the side. “This is a snail.”

“It moves slow and steady just like you! _And_ it’s got an iron shell!”

Hajime squints at Oikawa. “Are you trying to tell me something, Shittykawa?” he asks. 

Oikawa just grins at him and pulls him away. Nothing ever keeps his attention for long. 

They have lunch outside, on a large green lawn where several food trucks are gathered. Oikawa gets them hotdogs, and Hajime buys them tea, and then they find a bench that overlooks the beach just beyond there and settle. 

“We have to check back in with the teachers soon,” Hajime says, as they eat. “We’re meant to start heading for the hotel in about an hour or so.”

“Ah, but I still wanted to look at the seals,” Oikawa pouts. “And all the tropical fish! There’s also the -”

“Oikawa,” Hajime says. “There’s something I wanted to tell you.”

Something flickers in Oikawa’s eyes. He only smiles wider. “Did you only just remember you haven’t yet told me how handsome I am today? Honestly, Iwa-chan -”

“I’m going to Tokyo for school, after summer,” Hajime says. 

Oikawa’s expression doesn’t change. He says, “Well, I knew that already,” and keeps smiling so hard it makes something ache inside Hajime. 

“No,” Hajime says. “I don’t think you do. I’m not going to Tokyo for volleyball, Oikawa. I’m going for _school.”_

Last year, the scouts had already started coming to Inter-highs, and then after, to their practices. They had been there at the beginning of third year, too. That time, they’d come up to their coach and spoke a few brief words with him, and then coach had called Oikawa and Hajime up and they’d all walked together to the teacher’s offices, where they’d sat down together and been told this: F.C. Tokyo was willing to offer them both spots on the development team after graduation, if they wanted. 

If they wanted, if they wanted. 

Hajime’s not very used at all to being on a different page from Oikawa, but they probably should’ve talked about this sooner. How to get back to where they’d used to be?

Oikawa’s hand slips from Hajime’s pocket. Hajime hadn’t even realized he’d still been hanging on, he’d already gotten so used to it. He might already be used to the taste of Oikawa on his lips. He might already be used to Oikawa’s touch, on his skin.

“Ah,” Oikawa says. He keeps smiling. He’s still smiling. “I see, Iwa-chan.”

“Don’t -” Hajime says, but doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Don’t smile? Don’t act like this doesn’t matter? Don’t act like I haven’t hurt you? None of the words are right, because nothing is right. 

“You’re going to do great, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says. “You always have.”

The worst part might be that it even sounds like Oikawa means it. 

“I just wish you’d told me this sooner,” Oikawa says. His smile does not even flicker. It might never fade.

What would be worse, having things end like this, or never having had anything else at all? Hajime wonders if he regrets it, that night. He wonders if Oikawa regrets it more or less, now that they’re talking about this. He wonders if Oikawa would’ve done anything at all in the first place, if Hajime had made things clear before. 

“But this just means we have to use the time we have left together well!” Oikawa says, and jumps to his feet. His hands close around Hajime’s wrist, making him startle and drop his hotdog, but Oikawa has not stopped smiling. “Come on, let’s go look at the rest of the fish!”

Oikawa does not stop smiling for the rest of the afternoon. He does not stop smiling on the school bus all the way to their hotel, does not stop smiling as they get ready for bed in their shared room, does not stop smiling as Hajime goes to turn out the lights. 

He also doesn’t look at Hajime once. 

Everything feels like lying, these days, but Hajime hasn’t got anyone to blame for that but himself. 

-

**2.**

“You’ve never done this before,” Oikawa says, when Hajime’s paused just a little too long. 

“No,” Hajime says. 

There’s a pause. Hajime’s shoulders are beginning to ache, from having been propped up above Oikawa for so long. Then Oikawa exhales, slow. His fingers smooth through Hajime’s hair, gentle, and he moves up on an elbow, too, so that he can look down on Hajime. He’s a little pink, high spots of color on his cheeks. His lips are redder than usual; Hajime had done that. “I’ll teach you,” he says. “I know how to be good. Just -”

“No,” Hajime says again. “I don’t want to know how to be good. I just need to know what makes you feel good.”

Oikawa’s lips twitch. “Well, in that case,” he says. He hesitates. Hajime calls him shameless many times throughout the day on a regular basis, but this, Hajime’s beginning to realize, might be something he’s shy about. But he keeps looking at Hajime. Maybe this, too, is something he wants to savor just as much. 

Hajime slides his hand across Oikawa’s hips, and then again, more deliberately, lower. He tugs the waistband of Oikawa’s underwear all the way down, and finds him half-hard already; when he looks up, Oikawa is still looking at him. 

“Slowly,” Oikawa says. He breathes out, and his spine seems to go liquid. It seems to be taking him a lot of effort to keep himself sitting up like this, and Hajime wants to tell him to lie down, except that he wants Oikawa to keep looking at him, too. “I like it - slow. I like to be worked up. I like to - to want it.”

Experimentally, Hajime moves his thumb over the top of Oikawa’s cock, dragging along the skin there as he hears Oikawa’s breath catch, feels his hips stutter beneath him. “Like that?” he asks.

“Yes, but, more -”

Hajime gives him more. He closes his fist around the base, moves upwards slow, feels Oikawa get harder and harder beneath his touch, tries to remember how he does it for himself, how he draws it out. Slow, he tells himself. Slow. 

Oikawa makes a sound that catches in his throat, light, half a whimper. “Okay. Okay, Iwaizumi, I’m going to need you to move a little -”

He’s beginning to get wet, just a little, damp at the tip. Hajime wonders - and then he realizes he doesn’t have to wonder. He ducks his head down, closes his mouth around, moves downwards. Slow, he tells himself, keeping his hands on Oikawa’s hips to still him as he attempts to jerk up into Hajime’s mouth, as makes a garbled kind of sound that makes Hajime realize he’s hard, too, just like this, just doing this - _slow, slow_. 

“Iwaizumi,” Oikawa breathes out, sounding like he’s in pain, as Hajime sets a rhythm and keeps to it. _Slow, slow - _“Hajime. Please, please -”

Hajime had never realized that this was a thing that he could have. How is he supposed to live, now, with anything less than this?

-

**4.**

In the beginning of August, on a night just as humid and sweltering as its day, all the lights go out.

Hajime freezes in his kitchen, where he had been attempting to reheat the hamburger steak and gravy and rice that his parents had left him when they’d left on a two-day trip to Osaka. In this dark, he can’t even tell where his hands are, so he does the only thing left and yells, “Oikawa?” as he moves into the front room where he’d left Oikawa flicking through television channels a few minutes earlier. 

“Why did you turn all the lights out, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa whines, from the direction of the couch. Hajime can’t see well enough to tell for sure that’s where he is. 

“I didn’t. I think it’s a blackout. I’m going to check with the neighbors -”

“And leave _me _here all alone? You’re heartless, Iwa-chan!”

“It’ll only be for a few minutes.”

“No,” Oikawa interrupts. “Stay here. Please.”

Hajime pauses. His hand finds the doorway, and he grips it shut, willing his eyes to adjust faster, so that he might be able to look at Oikawa and tell what was making his voice so strange. “Okay,” he says, after a moment. “Okay, fine. I’m going to go look for candles in the kitchen, though. Don’t go anywhere.”

Oikawa doesn’t say anything else, so Hajime finds his way by feel and muscle memory back into the kitchen. He picks up his phone and uses its flashlight to rifle through all the drawers until he finds the candles and the matches to go with them. 

“Iwa-chan?”

“I found the candles,” Hajime says. He blinks rapidly as he heads back into the living room, settles down on the couch with Oikawa. “Here, hold -”

Oikawa holds the candle. Hajime flicks at the matches until they catch, and then holds the flame against the wick until that catches, too. The fire blooms to life; when Hajime looks up, he finds Oikawa’s face a little closer than he’d expected, except that he’s watching the flicker of flame and not Hajime. 

Hajime looks away, too. He clears his throat. “Guess we can’t have dinner until the electricity comes back.”

“That’s alright,” Oikawa says, softer than Hajime would’ve thought. “I’m not that hungry. Are you?”

“No,” Hajime says. His mouth is suddenly dry, as he leans back against the couch, feels Oikawa shift with him. “I can wait.”

“That’s good,” Oikawa says. 

Hajime has a feeling that all they’ve been talking about since the aquarium is how not to talk about it. In this dark, illuminated by a single flame that Oikawa leans forward to set carefully on the coffee table in front of them - 

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, now, his voice so quiet and terrible. “What are we doing?”

Hajime had invited Oikawa over tonight because his parents weren’t going to be home until the day after. There would be no one around to see them press against each other in bed, no one to hear the kinds of sounds Hajime’s learned best to draw from Oikawa. What are they doing?

“Not eating dinner,” he says. 

Oikawa shakes his head. He’s still not looking. “Don’t - don’t do that, Iwaizumi. Don’t be me.”

Hajime goes quiet. He considers this, and the words, and Oikawa’s tone. “Do you want to stop, then?” he asks. He doesn’t know which would be worse, if they’d never even started or if Oikawa said _yes, I want to stop _and then he realized the exact depth of the things he had to miss. 

It’s the beginning of August. The summer will be over soon. And then they will both go to Tokyo, but for different things. 

What are they doing?

Hajime doesn’t know what Oikawa’s doing, because he’s since lost the ability to read him better than anyone else, but he thinks he knows what he’s doing. He’s taking what he can get, for however long that Oikawa’s willing to offer it to him. 

“I don’t want to stop,” Oikawa says. 

Hajime doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until he lets it out. In front of them, the candle flame flickers. 

“Oikawa,” Hajime says, and then stops. He doesn’t know what he’d meant to say. _I’m sorry_, maybe. _I feel the same. Can you tell me how to make it better? I feel the same, please tell me how I can make it better. _

Oikawa hasn’t stopped smiling since they’d gone to Okinawa, and now it’s the beginning of August and the end of summer is a weight that get heavier to breathe under every single day; Oikawa hasn’t stopped smiling since they’d gone to Okinawa, and Hajime’s so scared he’s forgotten how to. 

“Iwaizumi -” Oikawa begins, but then the lights flicker on, then off, and then on again. This time, they stay on. 

“What?” Hajime asks. When he glances sideways, Oikawa looks away, like he’d been looking first. 

“Nothing,” Oikawa says, in a voice that means it wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t ever nothing, not from the beginning, not right now, perhaps not ever. He leans forward, and blows out the candle, useless now. He pauses, braced there, bent over his knees. He says, “I’m hungry, Iwa-chan. Where’s dinner?”

What are they doing?

It’s the beginning of August. Soon, Oikawa will no longer be there to give him the things he hadn’t ever thought to ask for. 

-

**2.**

After, Oikawa says, “Come up here,” and kisses his own come off Hajime’s mouth. 

“Gross,” Hajime says, wrinkling his nose and trying to pull away.

Oikawa laughs, doesn’t let him pull away. He presses his hands harder against Hajime’s back, pressing them even closer together. “Shouldn’t I be the one saying that?” he asks, and then he moves his hands low, lower, between Hajime’s thighs. He smiles. “Oh, Iwa-chan.”

“Don’t call me that when you’re touching my dick,” Hajime says, trying not to flush. 

“Why not?” Oikawa asks, twisting his wrist in a way that makes Hajime bite his lip and want to curse. “Best friend privileges, _Iwa-chan.”_

“Yeah, but -” Hajime has to break off, to steady his breathing when Oikawa strokes over him firm and then firmer. Oikawa smiles, victorious and pleased. “You were the one who said not to talk.”

Oikawa’s hand pauses. He says, “That’s not what I meant.”

What? Hajime can barely concentrate on anything but the press of their skin together, on Oikawa’s hand around him. He doesn’t have the ability to parse the things Oikawa means. “Then what did you mean?”

“When I said not to talk, I didn’t mean talk like this. I meant - talking. I thought not talking about it would make it easier.”

“Easier to - to what?” he stutters, when Oikawa inexplicably begins to move again. 

Oikawa uses his other hand to press into the bend of Hajime’s waist, to shuffle them closer together, so that he can move his face into the side of Hajime’s and say, into his ear, 

“Easier to pretend this doesn’t have to be the last time.”

“But it doesn’t,” Hajime gasps. He keeps losing his train of thought. He can’t do anything but feel. “We can do this again. We don’t have to talk about it.”

Oikawa doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Hajime lets his eyes slip closed, lets the pleasure build. Then Oikawa says, “I suppose we don’t,” and his voice is heavy with something Hajime doesn’t have the presence of mind to understand.

He hates that it only occurs to him, after, that they really should’ve talked about it.

-

**5\. **

Hajime says, “Oikawa.”

Oikawa says, “What are you doing here, Iwa-chan?”

“To get you. Why are _you _here?”

“To say goodbye,” Oikawa says, and slams a serve into the opposing end of the court. 

Hajime doesn’t blink. “It’s not goodbye,” he says, moving cautiously closer, unsure if Oikawa would be above serving directly into his face. “You can always come back.”

“Sure,” Oikawa says, and laughs, and doesn’t look at Hajime. There is no inflection at all in his voice; Hajime, the person who’d always been let in best, can’t read anything at all on his face. “Sure, I can come back.”

Hajime watches him remove a ball from the cart, run his palms against it. He watches him back up slow from the endline, and then move back towards it fast, his body a tight chord as he throws himself into the air, just as beautiful and just as reckless as he’s ever been. Nothing has changed there, at least.

He lands light on his feet, steady and waiting. The serve goes out of bounds. He goes to pick up another ball - 

“Oikawa,” Hajime says. “Tooru.”

The line of Oikawa’s shoulders shift, like they’d tensed and he’d made himself relax. “Iwa-chan, if you’re on the court, you have to play,” he says, in that stupid teasing sing-song voice. He still doesn’t look at Hajime. 

Hajime feels abruptly tired. Oikawa hates talking about the things that matter, and Hajime hates to push. What was he even trying to accomplish here? “I’m not here to play.”

“Then you have to leave.”

“Oikawa,” Hajime begins again, frustrated. “Listen -”

“No,” Oikawa says. “I don’t want to.” He moves back from the endline. He tosses the ball into the air, chases it, serves it. 

This one is perfect. It goes right into a corner of the opposite court, a half-impossible thing, and then bounces up so high it almost brushes the ceiling. Hajime’s arm and hand ache just at the thought of it. 

Hajime says the only thing he can. He says, “I leave tomorrow morning.”

“Ah,” Oikawa says. “Ah, I see. Here for one last round, then? Ten more, Iwa-chan. Ten more, and then we can go wherever you want. It’s the last time, right? Might as well make it special. We can -”

“That’s not what I meant,” Hajime says. 

“Then what do you mean?” There’s bite there, now. Oikawa doesn’t want to talk about it; who is Hajime to keep pushing?

Hajime takes a breath. “I just - came to get you,” he says. “It’s late. Let’s walk home together.”

Oikawa rolls the ball he’s holding between his hands. He glances, almost cursory, at the door to the gym where Hajime stands beside. His expression is gentle, and already so far away. “No,” he says. “No, Iwaizumi. I don’t think so.”

The serve echoes around in the empty gym. Hajime leaves.

-

**2.**

How is it, that after so long, it’s still like this?

Hajime wakes up with the sun. There is something dried and sticky on his belly, between his thighs. He doesn’t want to move, because Oikawa’s pressed right up against him still, and he doesn’t want to wake him. 

But it’s morning. 

Last night, Oikawa had said _don’t talk. _Hajime had agreed. They weren’t going to talk about it. Hajime had underestimated the depth of which he would want to talk about it. He had underestimated how much he was already attached, hadn’t realized how much it might hurt to look at Oikawa’s sleeping face and know that he needed not to be here when he woke up. 

Graduation is next week. They leave for Okinawa today; Oikawa has been looking forward to going to the aquarium there for months.

Graduation is next week.

Hajime had underestimated how much it would hurt, not talking about it. How is it, that after so long, he still has to feel so much?

Carefully, slowly, trying not to jostle, Hajime extracts first his leg and then his arm and then the rest of his limbs out from Oikawa’s grip. He glances at the curtains they hadn’t closed last night, and goes to close them. He picks up discarded clothes from the floor, sorts them, folds Oikawa’s to leave on his dresser for him and gets back into his own. 

They had agreed not to talk about it. 

What are they doing?

“I don’t want to stop,” he says out loud, and finds that true. But then, too: “We’re not going to talk about it.”

What are they doing?

Hajime thinks they’re just doing the best they can, with the things that they’re allowed to have.

**[wish i could tell you things were better]**


End file.
